Earthling
by Chaotic Century
Summary: Willow has spent her entire life aboard the Globally 11, an Earth ship journeying for centuries to Planet Zi. When a terrible tragedy befalls the other colonists, she must learn to survive alone on a strange planet. Battle Story/Chaotic Century timeline; first in a trilogy.
1. Chapter 1

_**Chapter 1**_

The voyage of centuries ended with a thunderous crash.

Moments prior, Willow had been dreaming sweetly of places she'd never seen. Many times over the years, her imagination had worked with the bits and pieces and pictures she had been given in her Origins classes, and mentally recreated the planet that had never been home.

"It was once known as the blue planet," Henrietta - known to all of the ship's denizens, including her own young daughter, as simply Hen - had told Willow, handing her a photo. "But most often it was called Earth." Willow, ever the earnest little sponge of a student, gazed at the photo, studying its details: the expansive oceans, the tan and green land masses, and the lovely swirls of clouds marbling the atmosphere.

Cole, another student in class, although on the Pilot track and therefore not especially interested in the details of humanity's terrestrial history, snatched the photo right out of Willow's hand. "And we sent out the ships because Earth was a total dump, right?"

"It doesn't look like a dump to me," Willow said wistfully, admiring over Cole's arm this lonely little blue droplet hovering in space. "It's so beautiful."

"As you know, children, I have never seen Earth," Hen said, a hint of sadness evident in her voice. "My great-great-grandparents did, however, and they made sure to pass down their knowledge through stories, pictures, and films. That is the knowledge I am now passing along to you. And yes, Cole, the original ships were sent to Incognitus in order to find a more hospitable place to live. Human selfishness and centuries of war made survival on Earth increasingly difficult. When Incognitus was discovered across the Milky Way as possessing an Earth-like atmosphere and temperature, the first trio of ships was launched."

"And what happened to them?" Cole was always interested in the unanswerable, and so much the better if it involved violence and gore.

"A mayday transmission was received from the _Globally 3_ long before you were all born, about thirty years ago. There were no further communications. In the end, we don't really know what happened to them. What we are going to find on Incognitus is still, alas, a mystery."

"So it could be a total wasteland? Inhospitable to human life?" Cole asked, almost eagerly.

"It could," Hen conceded. "Maybe the pioneers never even made it to Incognitus." Willow paused in her furious note-taking for a moment to ponder the magnitude of that statement.

Willow's track, although of less immediate importance than Cole's, was nevertheless critical to the small sliver of Earth's society that had been venturing across the galaxy all these many years. The young people in the History track, though not in training to take the helm of the _Globally 11_ like Cole was, were also training for an important job: to be the knowledge guardians of Earth's culture, history, and societal structure. "A people that doesn't know where it's come from can never know where it's going," Hen had told Willow solemnly one day.

"But we _do_ know where we're going," Willow had responded, unclear on what her mother was trying to tell her. "We're going to Planet Incognitus."

Hen simply shook her head. "Without you and the other Keepers, the importance of what we are doing, and all that we have given up, will be lost. All of humanity's thousands of years of history on Earth would vanish for us."

Willow felt as though she had never stopped dreaming about Earth, despite being born long after the _Globally 11_ 's launch, and she had never stopped dreaming about Incognitus, either. She, unlike most of the colonists in the several generations prior, was going to be able to set her feet on the solid ground of a planet: what few of the scientists on board that remained had long ago estimated that an Incognitus landing was to occur in her lifetime; in fact, if all went well, it would be coming very soon. She frequently passed the dull, interminable days of soaring through featureless space by imagining what Incognitus would look like. She thought about some of the many geographic and environmental features of Earth she had learned about in her Origins classes: deserts, tundras, mountains, forests, plains, lakes, oceans. If Incognitus was supposed to be like Earth, then it would probably have many of those same features, she reasoned.

And on that particular day in ZAC 2059 right before the crash, when Willow was fifteen years old and eagerly anticipating the Incognitus landing that was soon to come, she was cozily ensconced in her teardrop-shaped sleep pod after a long afternoon of packing her belongings in preparation for touchdown. In her pod, soft, thick padding comfortably surrounded her, and all sounds outside were artificially blocked so as to allow her a good rest. Indeed, the designers and engineers of the _Globally 11_ , as they had with all of the pioneer ships, had given substantial thought to how to keep a population of nearly a thousand people - meant to be entirely self-sustaining for a couple of centuries in the unyielding isolation of their ship - healthy and in good enough spirits to be able to handle the mental rigors of space travel and the physical difficulties of eventually settling on a new world.

Cocooned in her silent pod as she was, dreaming colorful dreams of Earth and Incognitus and the stars, Willow was unaware of the final round of horrors taking place at that moment several floors away. In retrospect, it seemed an almost fitting end to the slow but inexorable decline of the civilization marooned aboard the _Globally 11_ : over several generations, illnesses, infighting, and insanity had exacted their grim tolls on the dwindling number of colonists. And it was at this particular time - with final landing preparations underway between the sole remaining Pilot and her sole remaining apprentice, Cole - that the very last tendrils of psychological stability of one of the Sentinels, the only members of the ship permitted to bear arms, had at last slipped away.

"You cannot be trusted!" he raved, brandishing his machine gun wildly at the Pilot and Cole. "It's a trap! This isn't Incognitus after all, but the planet where you will sell us into slavery!"

"Please," pleaded the Pilot. "Look there, out the window. Do you see that pretty blue marble coming closer and closer? That is Incognitus. We're going to land there and start our lives anew."

"We're going to crash!" cried the Sentinel, unmoved. "I can't let you kill us!"

"Just relax," Cole said, as one might speak to a frightened animal, not that he had ever encountered a non-human animal before. "It's going to be fine. We've all waited for many, many years, and we're almost there. Just another half hour or so. Please, just let us do our jobs and we will land everyone safely."

Willow did not hear the gunshots in her sleep pod.

She did not wake up at all, in fact, until the _Globally 11_ \- its gargantuan nose raised at the last possible second in a miraculous act of heroism by an apprentice Pilot dizzy with blood loss and dying - smashed into a desolate, rocky desert on a new planet.

-.-.-.-

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

This story takes place in a continuity that doesn't exist within the Zoids canon: an amalgamation of the Battle Story and Chaotic Century timelines. Nevertheless, aside from the contradictions between the two, I have made valiant attempts to ensure accuracy. Corrections to any errors I may have made are welcome.

And, as always, reviews are deeply appreciated. Thank you for reading.


	2. Chapter 2

_**Chapter 2**_

The _Globally_ at last came to a rest, after what seemed like an interminable slide across the gritty sand, accompanied by the cacophony of the ship's metallic screeches and groans that not even the sleep pods could mask. Willow's eyes had flown open upon impact and she cried out in fear as she was jostled violently about. When all finally stilled, Willow, though badly shaken, was unharmed thanks to her sleep pod's extensive cushioning and Cole's incredible foresight. She caught her breath for a moment, dazed, before staggering out of the dented cocoon and gazing wildly around her.

Unsurprisingly, there was some kind of blackout, and the darkness surrounding her was so thick that her hand was not even evident in front of her face. Questing timidly forward down the strangely tilted hall a few steps, towards an emergency kit she knew she would find there, she held her hands aloft until they touched the case. Inside was a flashlight, which she clicked on, casting its circle of light about.

The sleep pods' hallway she now stood in was indeed tilted sideways several degrees. There had been an artificially generated gravity field on the _Globally_ , of course, oriented to make everything fall towards the bottom of the ship. That gravity field was no more, however, leaving everything her light touched surreally misplaced. As the seconds passed and wakefulness returned more steadily to her, she noticed her wrist aching from when it had been pinned awkwardly between her body and the pod's cushioning. Silence reigned.

"Hello?" she called, fearful for her few remaining shipmates after such a crash. "Hello?! Is anyone here?" Her voice echoed distantly before all sound died away once more. The endless hum of the _Globally_ 's numerous systems and generators, a hum which had never ceased for as long as Willow had been alive, was conspicuously absent. This silence that met her ears was far more ominous than the cries of legions of injured people; were it not for her own voice rippling through empty metal corridors, she would have wondered if she'd lost her hearing entirely.

Not knowing where else to go, she scrambled clumsily through the ringing emptiness towards the ship's bridge, determined to find out what was going on, and encountered countless mangled bodies along the way: another Keeper who had been a dear friend, several Sentinels, Farmers, children. None had survived the crushing impact. Gasping anew at every painful scene she found, tears leaked from her eyes at the scale of these losses, when already there had been so few survivors of the _11_ 's long voyage still left. These people had gone their entire lives in hopes of landing on Incognitus to start anew, to really be able to _live_ as humans ought, and right at the very end, right before their new beginnings, they had perished. The cruelty of such a fate was breathtaking.

All was quiet and still except for her clanking footsteps and shallow inhalations; the once-familiar walls, nearly hidden in blackness, seemed to be pressing in eerily as the minutes ticked by with no visual reprieve from this stark and hellish landscape of dead.

When Willow finally reached the bridge, she there discovered the grisly scene that had dramatically played out only minutes prior. A strangled scream escaped her at the sight of such violence as the spot of light danced from one terrible image to another in her shaking hand; she had never beheld anything like this before, despite being aware, in a distant way, of similar past events that had been quickly covered over and hushed up in order to preserve the mental stability of the other colonists.

She found she was unable to step into the room, unwilling to become a part of this ghastly tableaux. The Pilot had fallen backwards against the control panel, her injuries so extensive, so indescribable, as to make it obvious that she had already perished. Cole, however, sprawled on the floor and blinking in the sudden brightness of Willow's flashlight as blood seeped steadily out of his chest, lived yet, although just barely. The Sentinel responsible for these fresh terrors had already taken his own life and lay crumpled in the corner, an arc of splattered blood and brains tattooing the wall a few feet above his lifeless, blasted skull. A tiny peep of "Help" from Cole jolted Willow back to her senses. She rushed over to her former classmate - had it really been years since they had mused over the fate of the _Globally 3_ in Origins? - and cradled his torso and head in her arms, the flashlight dropping out of her hands and rolling across the tilted floor, forgotten. If only she had ever received anything beyond the most basic Healer training!

"Willow," Cole rasped, squinting up into her face in the dimness. "You're alive. We...might be the only ones who still are. I tried...the ship..."

"Hold on," she pleaded. "Just hold on. Don't try to talk."

He smiled grimly at her. "We're here," he said simply. "We made it." He coughed, blood leaking remorselessly out of his mouth. "Will you...will you tell me what Incognitus is like? Someday?" And then, with a small, painful gurgle, his rattling breaths ceased.

Willow remained there in the bridge, her chin resting in Cole's curly black hair, holding this last linkage to the only other sentient beings she had ever known, for a very long time. Her tears fell and then dried, and she shed no more of them, for there was nothing now but numbness.

Minutes, hours, or days passed in the bridge - time mattered not - when a slight dizziness overtook her, and as time's unknown increments passed further, that dizziness grew. It took a long while before her shock-addled brain understood: the oxygen generators had failed in the crash. The _Globally_ 's bridge was still largely airtight despite the impact of the emergency landing, and with no fresh air being pumped in, she would slowly suffocate unless she left. With much the same situation to be found anywhere else aboard the ship, Willow slowly grasped that she was going to have to test Incognitus' atmosphere sooner rather than later. If the Earth scientists' observations and calculations hundreds of years ago had been wrong, the moments before her death would likely be excruciating. But there was nothing else to do now but take her chances and disembark, since she surely would not last long with only a dwindling oxygen supply to sustain her. And what was left for her now on this ship, anyway? It was dead in more ways than one.

Willow, like all of the colonists on the _Globally_ , had been very thoroughly instructed in the correct procedures of how to properly exit the ship should it safely - or safely enough - land on a planet with solid ground. She made her way dully, silently, down to the bilge, footfalls clanking, breath reaching, light dancing, averting her eyes over and over from the evidence of the catastrophe that had befallen her shipmates.

She felt lucky, in a sense, that Hen was not among these twisted corpses; her mother had died a couple of years prior, when a particularly potent respiratory virus had swept through the humans of the _Globally_ , wreaking havoc amid the small population. The architects of the Incognitus Expeditions had carefully arranged an unorthodox family structure for the ships - largely discarding traditional monogamous couplings in favor of polygamy so as to increase the birth rate - in order to give these space-faring colonies the best possible chance of completing their journeys with sufficient numbers of people. Nevertheless, widespread fatal illnesses had not been anticipated to such a degree as had ultimately occurred, and Willow, like everyone else aboard, had endured the anguish of many a solemn "sending off" ceremony, when the body of the deceased was ejected from the ship to forevermore float lonely in the infinity of space. It was to that area of the ship that she now carefully descended, minding her balance on narrow platforms and dangerously tilted flights of stairs, where shadows stretched dizzyingly away from her flashlight.

Willow reached the quartet of thick doors, each facing a different direction to account for the ship's different possible orientations upon landing. They were imposing, not just for their strong association in her mind of loss, a final glimpse into a loved one's face before the permanent parting, but because of another kind of death: that of the existence she had always known. One of these doorways - which, based on the _Globally_ 's resting position, was most likely the one on her right - was going to usher her into the rest of her life, however long or short it might be.

The doors were usually electronically controlled, but had been designed with a manual override in anticipation of just the type of situation Willow now found herself in, with the entire ship powered down. She calmly rotated the tumblers to the inner door and swung open the heavy handle, then started in on the middle door beyond it, until finally she was before the third and last door, which stood resolutely between her and her fate. She rotated the tumblers into position, grasped the handle, and pulled.


	3. Chapter 3

_**Chapter 3**_

Gentle illumination reached out toward Willow from beyond the doorway, beckoning.

It was a soft and velvety night on the new planet; the land was awash in the light of two red moons holding hands in the sky, and a vast green dome beyond of stars uncountable. Willow inhaled, in wordless wonder in the face of such beauty, the first things her eyes had ever seen from within the cradling atmosphere of a planet. When she inhaled again, she realized that the air here was not only breathable, but fresh and clean and something that would keep her alive. All her life, she had known nothing but the stale, artificially generated air of the silenced behemoth within which she was still rooted; to breathe this air now was to know what it was to be alive. Scents unknown reached her virgin nostrils.

Looking down past where she stood on the exit ramp's lip, she saw gritty, rocky sand: the earth of Planet Incognitus. She stepped out upon it with care and reverence, sensed the solidity of the enormous mass beneath her feet, and then collapsed to her knees, overcome. She felt the sand against her skin, let it run through her fingers, and watched it tumble daintily back to the ground from whence it had come. She looked around her again, at the caps of moonlight and corresponding pale shadows that lay over rolling hills of sand in all directions. There was a constant but soft breeze emanating from her left, and it tousled her long hair and whispered in her ears, beckoning.

This place, beyond the Earth scientists' wildest dreams, was beautiful.

-.-.-.-

Willow remained awake for hours, listening and feeling and smelling and seeing this new, wondrous place. As dawn broke, however, and tiredness slowly overtook her, she realized that there were several problems she needed to address, and that she could not remain in that desert forever, gawking pointlessly at the landscape and sky. The water-making mechanisms of the _Globally_ were worthless now, and so she would need a source of potable water soon. She needed a place to sleep that had both fresh air and safety, although she wasn't sure what types of animal life might exist here. Her food supply, while quite bountiful for the time being, would not last her forever. And lastly, there remained the monumental task of handling the many dead still aboard the ship.

For now, though, she was too tired to deal with anything beyond the most pressing of tasks, and so she stood and went back into the ship. The light of the sunrise outside filtered in, illuminating the bilge well enough for her to have a look around with newly appraising eyes. Venturing far from the exit door would be workable temporarily, but not for long periods, where the depleted oxygen would, at best, probably not leave her feeling very well. Nor could she sleep on the floor of the bilge, where some manner of wild animal would be able to reach her should it venture curiously aboard. Looking up, she saw a landing on the metal stairwell she had descended the day before. While it was, of course, still tilted, sturdy vertical railings along its sides would prevent her from rolling off. She nodded to herself, grabbed the flashlight, and ascended into the body of the ship in search of blankets and cushions she might use to assemble a comfortable perch.

-.-.-.-

During her waking hours, it was easy to remain lost in wonder at the grandiose, or lost in concentration on the immediate minutiae of her survival. During the day, however, when she needed to sleep, sadness flooded into her defenseless mind, infecting her dreams with remembrances of Hen, of mangled bodies, of Cole's rasping last words.

"Will you tell me what Incognitus is like?"

Loneliness prevailed. She would have given so much to be able to lead her classmate out of the exit doors, and point to the moons and stars, and let Cole see for himself. He had been so close.

It wasn't fair.

-.-.-.-

Willow awoke as dusk began falling softly over the desert. There were no sounds but the faint whistling of the wind, still gently nudging sand along into the rolling dunes. She selected her first meal from the massive pantry: a simple can of beans, beans that had been grown the prior year right aboard the ship, fed with generated water and sunlight gathered from passing stars. They were plain and largely tasteless, but she was so hungry that she didn't much mind.

Thus fueled, spare spade from the farming sector in hand, she began her grim task.

Having studied Earth's cultures extensively, Willow knew that it was common in many societies to bury the dead. She couldn't jettison the bodies still aboard the _Globally_ into space as had been done in the past, so burial was the most logical option here on Incognitus. As she began digging some distance away from the ship, the monumental scale of the task before her now registered. There was no way she would be able to dig fast enough to bury everyone before the bodies began to decompose, but she had to try, anyway, because what else could she do?

She rubbed her hands together to warm them up in the cool desert air, and got to work.

-.-.-.-

If Willow had thought that being the sole surviving member of the only tiny society to which she had ever belonged had been loneliness, it was nothing compared to the solitary task of digging holes for hours and hours so she could bury the only people she had ever known. There was nothing to focus on but the pain of her burning muscles and blistering hands, and her own isolation. Still, she kept at it as the night wore on, determined to do right by all of the innocent lives that had been lost, by these people who had been one giant family to her. Hen, though having nine other children besides Willow, had loved and made time for all of them, and Willow's many half-siblings and friends all may as well have been immediate family members. Even Cole, whom she had not seen much in later years as their respective tracks of study diverged, had been a part of life aboard the _Globally 11_. These people, no, these loved ones, deserved a proper burial, the best that Willow could do. And so, ignoring the protests of her overworked body, she kept going, with only Incognitus' pair of crimson moons as silent witness to her labors.

-.-.-.-

With the arrival of dawn, Willow decided it was time to fill the first of the holes she had made, before going to bed. She wanted it to be Cole.

Being far taller and more muscular than she, he was quite difficult to move. There was a growing stench aboard the ship now, and it was a long trip from the bridge to the exit doors. She wished she could do something about Cole's clothes, stiff and sticky with blood, but her water supply was too precious to waste on anything but the most essential washing.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she murmured to him, over and over as she maneuvered his body awkwardly down the stairs to the bilge, out of the ship, and a few hundred feet away to the designated burial site. It wasn't until she had gotten him into his grave - more roughly than she'd meant to, although there was no helping it - that she collapsed next to it and wept. His face, aside from a trickle of dried blood at the corner of his mouth, was so smooth and serene, he may as well have been asleep. The hole she had dug was not very deep, and so she lay down on her stomach at its edge, holding his cool hand and weeping into her other arm. "I'm so sorry, Cole," she said through heaving breaths. "You should have been able to see this place. You saved my life, and you deserved so much better than this." Somehow, Cole had become the avatar for everyone and everything she had lost. She longed for his eyes to open, for his wounds to close, for it all to have just been a long sleep, so that she would not have to make her way forward in this new life alone. She had not yet even discovered evidence of life here, and wondered if perhaps she had landed on a planet of utter desolation. What use was a habitable atmosphere if there were nothing here but sand and rock?

Despair swept over her, as black and empty as space.

She lay beside Cole's grave for awhile as the sun slid above the horizon, crying until she was too worn out to continue. Her eyelids fluttered, sleep beckoning, when she jerked upright suddenly. There were vibrations in the ground coming to her, ricocheting through the shifting sands. They grew stronger and stronger until a new sound became evident, a sound she had never heard before, either on the _Globally_ or on the new planet. It grew louder and clearer: the sound of metal and moving parts. She scrambled to her feet, looking in the direction the sound was coming from, and nearly fell over in shock when the source of the sound appeared.

Approaching at speed was a towering robotic creature, many times taller than she herself was, shining white in the early morning sun. It traveled on four legs, and the shape of its head with its pointed ears reminded Willow of an animal called a dog that had often been beloved by Earthlings. Yet this monstrosity was larger than any dog that had ever existed on Earth, and it was obviously made of metal, not flesh like a real dog.

She was in such a state of awe and fright, not to mention exhaustion, that her brain simply gave up attempting to understand, and so she remained rooted there stupidly as the robot approached first the _Globally_ , then, swinging its head in her direction, towards her. It trotted over and then lay down before her, chin to the ground, emitting a quiet vocalization a bit like a subdued growl. The large orange panel that was on its face raised up, revealing, to her slack-jawed bafflement, a cockpit. And inside that cockpit was a young man with cocoa-colored spiky hair and wearing a rather shocked expression, himself.

There was a few moments' pause as both considered the other. At length, he said something to her, calling across the small distance between them from the cockpit of his robot. Willow did not understand. She shook her head. He said the same thing again, louder and slower, and still she shook her head.

"Can you understand me now?" he said finally in the Common Tongue, and although his accent was new to her and quite strong, he was at last speaking a language she knew. She nodded vigorously but said nothing, for her brain was still sputtering along trying to comprehend all that had happened in the last ninety seconds. Human. Dog. Robot.

With a graceful drop, he was out of the cockpit and walking somewhat tentatively towards her. She backed away slightly as he approached, unclear of his intentions.

He held his hands up. "I'm not going to hurt you," he said soothingly. "I'm Dan. Scout for the Republican Army."

Willow stared at him, then ventured, "I'm Willow."

"Willow," Dan said, glancing at the hulking _Globally_ , which made even the robot look quite small, "are you alone out here?" He looked back at her. "How long have you been here?"

Willow swallowed and said nothing, looking at her feet. She didn't know if this human was trustworthy. She knew nothing about this planet, about who lived here, and, more importantly, about who was warring with whom, and why. Because if her studies of Earth had taught her anything, it was that someone was _always_ warring with someone else. For justifiable reasons or not, war was as much of a constant in human life as birth and death. She peered at him then. Perhaps he was not human? After all, no one aboard her ship had had any idea if the first three _Globally_ ships had made it safely to Incognitus. He certainly looked human, though, with proportions and features that appeared utterly normal to her. His hairstyle and clothing were odd, of course, but that was to be expected.

"Are you alright?" he asked, breaking the silence and her train of thought.

She nodded, staring at her feet in the dirt once again. It felt so strange to be talking to someone new, after a long stretch of solitude, and a lifetime of all the same people, with very few new additions. The birth rate aboard the ship had plummeted the longer the journey had gone on as the colonists' numbers decreased, until there were very few remaining who were younger than Willow.

Dan was studying her ship again, taking in the crumpled metal along the flanks, the dented nose, and the enormous stripe in the ground, extending beyond sight, where the _Globally_ had gouged out a deep skid mark upon landing. He turned to her again. "You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to. I don't want you to feel frightened. The only thing I have to do every day is travel around this big, boring desert and make sure the Empire isn't planning any incursions onto our territory." Willow smiled ruefully, sad to have it confirmed so quickly that the realities of war were present here, too. She hadn't actually expected a human-like race, no matter the planet they hailed from, to be any different from those of Earth, but it had been nice to hope for peace for a moment. "Anyway, I'm prattling on a bit," Dan said sheepishly. "What I'm trying to tell you is that, well, I'm pretty sure you're not an Imperial invader. So I have no quarrel with you, and I mean you no harm."

Willow nodded. "Okay," she said, though this was soon followed by an involuntary yawn. Although it was still morning, according to the sleep schedule she'd had aboard the ship, it was almost time for bed. Her muscles were stiff with pain from the hours of digging, and she longed to rest. But she was curious about this newcomer, curious about all of the information he would surely be able to impart, including, most especially, an explanation of the giant robot he seemed to pilot across the ground the way Cole and others had piloted the _Globally_ across the heavens. She mustered her bravery, and then pointed at the mechanical dog. "What is that?"

Dan's eyebrows raised clear half across his forehead. "You mean, you don't know what that is?" Willow shook her head. "You're _really_ not from around here, are you?" She shook her head again. He laughed, somewhat incredulously. "Well, that's my Command Wolf. His name is Zeke." As if to introduce himself, Zeke vocalized again, a bit more loudly this time.

A wolf! Of course. Wolves were another Earth animal that resembled dogs; in fact, dogs had descended from wolves. But his wolf was a robot, not a living creature as she understood the term. "But what... _is_ it?" she asked again.

Dan was outright staring at her now. Slowly, his right hand raised, one finger pointing into the sky overhead. "Did you...come from out there?" He sounded as if he were struggling with the thoughts running through his head, but there the words were, hanging in the air between them. Willow paused, and then nodded. "Where, then?" he said softly. "Where did you come from, Willow?" She looked at his face, with its red slash of color punctuating his left cheek like an exclamation, and into his eyes, which were dark and concerned, but most of all kind.

"Earth," she said.


	4. Chapter 4

_**Chapter 4**_

It took Dan a moment to register what Willow had just said, but when he did, his expression twisted immediately into worry. "If...if what you're telling me is true - and I have to admit I'm kind of in shock about it - then you aren't safe here," he said finally.

"I'm not? Why?"

"Because they'll want you, and your ship, and all of the technology on your ship, to gain the upper hand."

"Who's 'they'?" Willow pressed. "Upper hand in what?"

Dan ran his hand anxiously through his spiked hair. "I guess there's a lot you don't know. There's a war on. It's not at the same level as it was before the meteorites-"

"Meteorites?!" Willow interrupted, eyes wide. Her brain was having trouble keeping up with, let alone processing, this onslaught.

Dan sighed. "Listen, I can't stay. And you look really tired. I will tell you everything, I promise, but I can't right now. Someone is bound to notice if I linger for too long in one spot, and I don't want anyone to know that you're here. I work with some good guys, of course, but some of the ones in the upper ranks are going to take way too much of an interest in you." A radio crackled to life in Zeke's cockpit as if to emphasize his point, its words sharp but unintelligible from where they stood. Dan glanced over at it, then back at Willow. "Tell you what. I'm going to go finish my sweep for the day. Go to sleep, and I'll be back around dusk." With a tilt of his head at the graves Willow had begun, he added, "And I can help you with those, too. If you want."

Willow was wobbly with exhaustion, and too tired to wonder anymore if this Dan human/humanoid was trustworthy. And so she nodded gratefully and trudged off towards the _Globally_ and her little nest within. She turned once to look back at him. He had already climbed back into Zeke's cockpit. He waved, then turned the wolf around and off they went, trotting across the desert hills. She watched them until they had vanished into the haze of heat that was already forming, then she entered the ship and collapsed into her blankets. She was asleep almost immediately.

-.-.-.-

Many hours later that day, Willow's sleep was interrupted by vibrations in the ground and the sound of metal parts working in concert. She sat up, stiff muscles crying out in protest, wondering what could be happening. That was when she remembered her meeting that morning with Dan and his Command Wolf. He'd told her he would return that night, and now, it seemed, he was making good on that pledge.

She stepped out of the _Globally_ and motionlessly observed the huge white robot approaching. It settled next to the gravesite, then Dan hopped out of the cockpit and walked over. "Hi," he said.

She nodded at him in greeting. "You came back," she said.

"I keep my word. Or at least I try to, anyway. To be honest, I've been pretty worried about you. Were you able to sleep?"

"I don't think I've really slept well since before the crash, although I'm managing, I suppose." She held her arms tightly, trying to ward off the chill she always experienced after waking up. With the sun setting, the desert had already cooled off significantly.

"And how long ago was the crash?" Dan asked gently.

"I'm not sure." Time seemed to blur. "A few days ago." She found herself staring at her feet again. Her eyes stung at her next words. "I was the only survivor."

"So you were trying to bury your dead," Dan said, looking over at Zeke and the crude holes she had dug the night before. "I imagine...that these were people you knew, and cared about." Willow nodded miserably. Images of all the maimed bodies she'd found rose unbidden in her mind's eye. "Would you like some help?" Dan asked. She looked up at him.

"But...but there are so many," she said, voice wavering.

Dan smiled at her. "I did my sweep as fast as I could. I don't have to be back at the base for another two hours. And you'll soon see how much Zeke can do." Zeke growled in agreement.

"Why are you helping me?" she asked, more bluntly than she had intended.

Dan scratched the back of his head awkwardly. "Well, I guess because I wanted to make you feel a little bit less...helpless. I've been through some hard times myself, especially in the last few years, but I can't even imagine what you've been through." He ducked his head slightly so as to better meet her eyes. "Can you tell me?"

Willow smiled slightly in spite of herself at that earnest face. "Yes, if there are things you'll tell me, too."

"Deal," Dan said, shaking her hand with gusto.

-.-.-.-

As promised, Zeke was indeed very helpful. With Dan once more at the controls, the huge robot was able to create a new hole for a grave with only one well-placed swipe of his enormous paw. Willow had not calculated recently how many people had remained aboard the _Globally_ , but she estimated it was around fifty, and within half an hour there were enough graves for all. Dan hopped out of Zeke's cockpit and stood next to her as she surveyed the scattered holes, her heart feeling as though it were swelling. "I...was worried, you see…" she began, taking a deep breath to steady her voice. "I knew it was going to take a long time to dig enough graves, and I knew...I knew it wasn't going to be pretty."

Dan nodded. "We'll get it done."

"Are you sure?" Willow asked, blinking up at him with wet eyes. There was a determined set to his square jaw. "Surely you have better things you could be doing than-"

"Actually, I don't," he interrupted. "And this kind of task is hard enough to do as it is without having to do it all alone, too."

Willow couldn't argue with this. They headed over to the ship, Willow retrieved her flashlight, and they plunged into the _Globally_ 's darkened, reeking bowels.

-.-.-.-

Like the prior evening, the work was awkward and slow-going. But with Dan there to help, it was much more efficient, and more companionable, too. To his credit, he did not so much as flinch at the awful scenes inside, nor did he complain about the stench. He was also quite interested in the _Globally_ itself, and he listened raptly, head swiveling around to take in what parts of the interior the flashlight illuminated, as Willow told him everything she knew about it. She also told him all about each person they retrieved, even if it was someone she hardly knew at all. This seemed fitting, as it served as a eulogy of sorts, and ensured that Willow was not the only one left in the universe to know that Ayumi had hated broccoli or that Finn had played many a harmless prank on his teachers after learning to throw his voice. Despite having his hands under the (often broken) arms of a corpse, with Willow holding the feet, Dan paid attention, asked questions, and laughed along with her if she related a particularly funny anecdote.

When the sun had fully set and they had placed the last body they would have time for that evening, Dan turned to her. "I'm going to use Zeke to push the sand back over the graves." He paused. "I'd like you to be in the cockpit with me."

Willow was taken aback. "But why?"

"Because," he said, not meeting her eyes, "I think I'd like to start teaching you how to pilot a Zoid." He paused, looking over at Zeke. "That's what they're called, by the way: Zoids. 'Zoologic Androids.' There are lots and lots of different kinds."

"But...doesn't Zeke belong to the army? What if I broke something?"

"Don't worry," he assured her. "Today I just want to show you some of the basic controls. You won't be able to hurt him."

"Why do I need to know how to pilot a Zoid?"

Dan still wouldn't look at her. "I think it's a useful skill for anyone to have. There are tens of thousands of Zoids still surviving, even after the meteorites. Knowing how to command one may save your life one day."

Willow realized then just how much they still had to talk about, since Zoids were still essentially a mystery to her, as were the meteorites that Dan had mentioned twice already, but there was no time now. She nodded, and followed Dan over to Zeke, where they both climbed inside the cockpit, Willow doing so far more awkwardly and precariously than he.

Zeke's cabin was designed for only one person, but nevertheless there was a very tight space available for her to stand in just aft of the pilot's seat. She positioned herself there as the orange canopy swung shut, and soon felt an unfamiliar rush of her stomach apparently sinking into her feet from the upward motion of Zeke standing and raising his head. It was all she could do not to plaster her face to the canopy and stare outside; she could see for miles and miles all around them from this height. The desert was peaceful in the twilight, and the _Globally_ was a massive shadow, forever slumbering.

"Zoids are actually living things," Dan explained. "So Zeke naturally does a lot of things by himself, without needing to be told how. For example, when he's walking, I don't have to input commands to each leg individually. I just use this steering column to guide him in the direction I want, and these foot pedals to tell him whether he should speed up, slow down, or stop, and he handles the rest. If we were coming up to something big on the ground ahead, he doesn't need a 'jump' command. He'd see it and just jump over it himself."

Willow nodded, peering at the console. "You make it sound pretty simple. So then what are all these buttons for?"

"Well, a lot of them are for the weapons systems, as well as communications systems with other Zoids or command centers. And some help me do individual things that he wouldn't know to do on his own. For instance, he's going to help us fill in these graves. I have to control his paw to do that. He'll follow those inputs, but he'll still naturally do things himself, such as maintaining his balance on three legs while the fourth is pushing sand around."

Willow was fascinated. The Council had not recognized the latent aptitude she possessed for learning certain subjects very quickly; although she did not know it, having studied under the Keeper track for so long, she would have made an excellent Mechanic, or Pilot like Cole. Everything Dan was saying made perfect sense to her, and she was startled to realize that her hands were itching so much to get at Zeke's controls that she'd forgotten about the pain of her losses for a moment.

"Alright, I'm going to start filling the graves in. Shall we have a moment of silence?"

"Please," Willow said, shifting her focus back to the matter at hand. "These were good people."

"I feel like I knew them, myself," Dan remarked, his gaze distant. Then he turned to her. "You're a good storyteller."

"Thank you," she replied, smiling. To do so felt vaguely unnatural; it was as if centuries had passed since she'd last done so. "It was kind of part of my training, actually." Dan nodded, and with that, both now looked forward, at the scattered graves with the souls untimely lost within, and bowed their heads.

-.-.-.-

It took another morning and following evening - with Willow keeping busy overnight prior to both in order to expedite the process - before everyone they could find aboard the _Globally_ had been given a decent burial. Some had proven far harder to bid farewell to than others, and Dan revealed his endless patience and understanding again and again. Willow did not know how to express her gratitude for his (and Zeke's) help, and when she nevertheless gamely attempted, he waved her off with a "Don't mention it." Seeing her incredulous face, he added, "Really. I'm sure, if I had crash-landed on Earth, you would have done the same for me."

"I'd like to think I would have, but maybe I would have been too scared," she admitted.

"It's easier to be brave when you're in command of a double-barrel beam cannon," Dan said wisely. "Anyway, listen. I wanted to talk to you about something important."

Willow clambered up onto Zeke's front paw and settled down, pulling her knees up to her chest. She had the feeling she wasn't going to like what he was about to say, but nevertheless motioned for him to continue.

"When I told you, that first day we met, that you weren't safe here, I meant it. I think it's time we relocate you someplace you can hide, and…" He looked at the _Globally_ , lit up bright orange in the waning sun, then turned back to her apologetically. "I think we need to get rid of your ship."

"My ship?" Willow cried, straightening up abruptly and nearly falling off of Zeke's foot. "But why?!"

"Because it's only a matter of time before someone finds it. I may be the only guy who comes out to this part of the desert right now, but it won't be just me forever. And when they find it and see that there was at least one survivor," here he pointed to the graveyard, "they will not rest until they find you. It's better we just blow it to smithereens and get you out of here."

"But...but it's my home," Willow protested. "Where would I live?"

"We're going to figure that out," Dan assured her. "Your ship is not much of a home for you anymore, anyway. Blood and bad smells and darkness and reminders of all you've lost." Willow stared at her feet and didn't say anything, unable to disagree with this logic, so he continued, "Trust me when I say that you - and your Earth technology - don't want to be found by either the Empire _or_ the Republic."

"Why?" she asked, her voice suddenly small and scarcely audible over the whistling desert wind.

"Because last time visitors from Earth crash-landed here, things didn't go so well for most of the survivors."

Willow's head snapped up in shock. "What?" she gasped. "Visitors from Earth? You mean, I'm not the first?"

Dan shook his head. "Didn't you think it was strange that we could speak the same language?"

Willow reddened. Everything about their meeting had been so sudden and shocking, amidst everything else she hadn't given such an anomaly a moment's thought. She tucked a lock of her long brown hair behind her ear. "So what happened? To the Earthlings?" she asked.

"The Empire and the Republic have been warring for decades now," Dan explained. "When the Earth ship crashed, about thirty years ago, the surviving colonists were taken prisoner by the Empire, and what remained of their ship was confiscated. The technology on that ship was extremely advanced compared to what we had here on our planet, and though the Empire had it first, through spying and stealing the Republic got their hands on it too, and it was eventually used by both sides to make their Zoids much more powerful. Zoids may be living things, but they're almost always used as tools of war.

"The Earth people suffered horribly, I'm sad to say. Many were tortured in horrific scientific experiments to determine what differences there were between humans and Zoidians." Willow opened her mouth to ask a question, but Dan, anticipating this, shook his head. "Mostly, there aren't any. One human managed to worm his way to a very high position in the Imperial government by basically selling out his shipmates. He is the reason the Common Tongue found its way off of your planet."

"And so you think they would use the technology from my ship to, what? Step up the war? It has only rudimentary weapons."

"The war got sidelined by the meteorites three years ago. No one had any time to be killing each other over pointless border disputes when plain old survival was such a struggle. But both sides are more recovered now, and superior technology could easily tip the balance between them one way or the other. Your ship's weapons are only one part of that equation." He looked steadily at her and spoke slowly, so as to emphasize this next point. "They'll want to find you, and it won't be good for you if they do."

"Why are you helping me, then? What if the Republic got at my ship? Don't you want your side to win the war?"

Dan sighed. "I don't want us to _lose_ the war, but...I'm not sure I want us to win it, either. I don't know how many people are left on either side after the meteorites, but I can tell you that the border disputes and all of that meaningless stuff don't matter to a vast majority of Imperial _or_ Republican citizens. Most of us just want to be able to recover and rebuild and live our lives peacefully, and we don't care about some stupid strip of land someplace."

Willow decided that further explanation of what had happened with the meteorites could wait. "So what do I do?"

"You've got a lot of food stores on your ship, I hope?" Willow nodded. "Then I've got an idea." He squinted at the sunset. "Try and start shifting your sleeping hours, okay? I need you to be awake when I am. Start getting together the things you need to keep, stuff for survival as well as the stuff you can't bring yourself to live without. And every morsel of food you can find. Every last bit." He climbed up into Zeke's cockpit. "I'll be back in three days." His eyes softened slightly as he looked down at her. "Be careful."

She nodded and watched as Zeke's canopy whirred shut and the enormous metallic creature turned and galloped off over the desert hills.


	5. Chapter 5

_**Chapter 5**_

Dan kept his promise, just as Willow knew he would. She had done her best to change her sleep hours in their time apart; she stayed up as far into the day as possible, then remained on her little landing bed, lost in the twilight of half-sleep, as far into the night as the relatively uncomfortable accommodations permitted. She found herself missing the coziness of her sleep pod. Missing the sound of other voices besides her own. Missing Hen. Missing Dan.

And so, when the now-familiar vibrations in the ground told her that Zeke was approaching at the dawn of the third day, she was awake and mostly alert. She stood in the doorway to the _Globally_ , and watched as Zeke trotted over and sat down. Dan opened the cockpit and waved, and Willow felt a strange, warm surge through her chest at the sight of his face. Wondering what this could mean, she waved back and walked over to meet him.

"Good morning, Willow-from-Earth," he said easily, as though they had known each other for years. Again the warm surge. She felt her cheeks flush. What was happening to her? "Are you ready to go?"

"Yes, I think so," she said, as steadily as she could, although in truth she felt afraid and more than a little unmoored by both these odd sensations as well as what was about to happen.

Seeming to sense her hesitation, he put a hand on her shoulder, giving it a little squeeze. "Don't worry, we'll come back tonight," he said softly. "You don't have to say goodbye just yet, although I think you should begin preparing to."

She nodded, feeling a little braver. "So what now?"

"I arranged for a special cargo carrier for Zeke for the next few days," he said, pointing to a large crate that was hanging from Zeke's neck and fastened to his chest like an awkward necklace. Zeke seemed vaguely uncomfortable with the addition, but was otherwise placid. "I just told them that I'd found some interesting ruins and might want to carry back some samples. We'll use that to move your stuff. So let's get it packed up with whatever you won't need in the next day or so, and you can come with me on my sweeps today. There's a place I think you'll be able to live in safety for awhile. I found it not that long ago, actually."

"Nobody will know?" Willow asked, nervousness prickling at her spine. "That I'm traveling with you?"

"If you hear the radio, just don't make a sound. That's the only way anyone would be able to tell I had a passenger. We used to have video feeds to and from the cockpit, but there are so few satellites still operational these days after everything that's happened that that kind of data load just isn't practical anymore."

They worked together, ferrying dozens and then hundreds of cans of food out of the _Globally_ 's dank interior and into Zeke's carrier until it was filled to the brim. Even with all this work, they barely made a dent in the food stores still aboard. Dan nodded his approval. "I'm glad to see you're so well-provisioned. You may be able to grow some of your own food at the new site, but it won't be easy."

"Are we going to go there today?"

"We're going there now, actually. Just ride in that spot you were in last time."

"That spot" made for uncomfortable travel, but Willow eventually settled somewhat crookedly into a tolerable position, and was glad that she still had views out of the canopy, even though there wasn't all that much to see so far besides sand. She also carefully observed Dan's use of the controls, trying to learn what each button, knob, or switch did, although he didn't need to do much when simply traversing featureless, empty desert. They rode on in this comfortable silence for a time, Zeke's easy, loping strides eating up the miles.

"Can you tell me about the meteorites?" she finally asked into the quiet that had settled over them.

Dan exhaled and was silent for a moment before speaking. "We call it 'the cataclysm.' It was...breathtakingly terrifying, Willow. I don't even have words for it. Something - something very, very big, that is - hit one of our moons three years ago."

"Really?" Willow tried to imagine what that would have looked like to an observer far below.

"Yeah. There used to be three moons, but now it's just the two. Anyway, the third moon basically shattered, and all these giant pieces fell down all over the world and caused devastation the likes of which we're still struggling to understand. Although, we did discover a year or so ago that the continent northeast of ours has broken apart, into at least three sections. Communications have been pretty badly affected, as you might imagine. Nothing has been heard from Nyx since, actually, so we don't even really know what happened there yet. Although trust me, you don't ever want to be hearing anything from Nyx."

"What is Nyx?"

"It's a continent far north of here, close to the North Pole. Stronghold of the Empire, and they've repeatedly waged war on us from those shores. They have some dark, scary Zoids there. The less of that continent exists, the better it is for the rest of Zi."

"Zi?"

"That's the name of our planet," Dan clarified.

"Zi," Willow repeated, liking the feel of the word on her tongue. It somehow sounded better than the Latin name the planet had been given by the Earth scientists. She sat silently, absorbing the rest of this new information. She wondered if the horrors of war and environmental degradation on Earth that she had learned about, that had prompted the formation of the Incognitus Expeditions, could at all compare to what the people of Zi had been through. "What was it like for you?" she asked. "Did any of the meteorites land near where you were?"

Dan was quiet. "My parents and sister were killed," he said softly, his voice thick. "My village was devastated. It was terrifying, to see these enormous things come plunging straight out of the sky, right at you. So big that you had nowhere to run." He turned to look at Willow; there were tears in his eyes. "It was like war. Huge and unstoppable. I had to join the army because there wasn't anywhere else I could go, but…" He turned back to face front. "I don't want anyone else to ever have to feel the way I did: helpless and afraid."

"I understand," Willow said. She looked out of Zeke's canopy, then down at the top of Dan's head and shoulders, which were visible from this angle. Again came the warm feelings in her chest, leaving her bewildered and a bit melancholy. "Would you like to talk about something else? I didn't mean to upset you."

"No, no, it's alright," Dan said, in a more normal tone. "I'm fine. There just have been a lot of things to adjust to in the last few years." He laughed then. "And I think that, even in spite of how unpredictable it's all been, I still couldn't have possibly imagined meeting someone like you."

Willow smiled to herself. "This isn't the way I thought this would all go either, trust me."

"Hold on," Dan said. Alarm was evident in his voice. He sat up straighter.

Willow's stomach contracted. "What? What is it?"

"Sandstorm." Willow looked ahead of them and there, on the horizon in the distance and a bit to the east, was what appeared to be an enormous wall of darkness advancing rapidly in their direction. "They're not common but not unheard-of, either. The important thing to do is to not panic."

"Okay, I'm not panicking," she said, although this was debatable. "What else do we do?"

"We ride it out. Most of the time, you'll be safe inside your Zoid, so you should just sit tight until it's over."

"What about the times it isn't safe?"

"Look, unless you're piloting a Zoid in dire need of repairs, the cockpit should be sealed tight against the outside. The main concern is if the wind gets too strong, it could damage your Zoid or even knock it over." He began shifting the steering column and pressing buttons. "What I like to do is present as small a target as possible." Zeke had by now turned to face away from the massive sandstorm, which seemed to Willow like a great, malevolent being bent on ingesting everything in its path. Zeke lay down on his belly, rested his chin against the ground, and waited.

"We can't outrun it?!"

"Nope."

The radar showed the storm getting closer and closer.

"Will we be buried alive?" she fretted.

"Even if enough sand piled up to completely cover Zeke, he's very strong and will be able to pop right out. Don't worry."

Willow tried to calm herself by breathing slowly. As the sandstorm approached, the dreadful _whoosh_ of its winds became evident. Seconds later, it felt like a battering ram had smashed into Zeke's hindquarters, and then a great howling force surrounded them. Zeke shifted his feet outward to better steady himself, yet his entire metallic body was shaken and jarred by the strength of the storm. Willow choked back a scream and squeezed her eyes shut, bracing herself against Dan's seat.

"They don't last long," he said, shouting to be heard over the cacophony.

And he was right; within two minutes the storm had departed, although to Willow it seemed to have been of infinite duration. When the winds' angry cries died down and Zeke's body stilled, she dared to open her eyes.

Zeke had been buried up to his snout in sand, but was otherwise unharmed. "Better keep holding on," Dan advised. "We're about to get tossed around a bit more." Willow nodded, her eyes wide, and clung for dear life to the pilot's seat. Zeke stood, bursting easily from the sand drifts that had half-consumed him, and gave himself a good shakedown, sending sand flying in all directions. Once Zeke was comfortably standing, Dan peered out of the canopy.

"Oh, look there," he said, pointing ahead at a weathered-looking structure that had obviously already endured its share of sandstorms. "We didn't even notice, but we're almost there."

Willow wriggled herself into a better position to see where Zeke was facing. "What is it?"

"Barracks, I think. An army outpost that was meant to work in symbiosis with the town that developed here a long time ago." Dan nudged the steering column slightly forward, and Zeke began walking, head held up high and alert.

"What happened to the town?"

"We don't really know. There are abandoned ruins all over Zi. Scientists keep discovering things in them, too, about the cultures that once lived on our planet." He gave her a little grin. "Don't worry though, I've done some poking around this place and it looks alright. I don't think any ancient horrors will be springing to life from the darkness to attack you." Willow frowned, wondering what ancient horrors he could even be referring to. Zombie Zoids? Noticing her worried expression, he nudged her arm lightly with his elbow. "I'm only kidding," he said. "No such thing. Anyway, I'd been kind of scoping it out even before I met you, and I've never seen any evidence that anyone else even knows it's here. No tracks, nothing. It's a quiet and kind of lonely place."

"Just like my ship, now," Willow murmured sadly.

"I think you'll feel comfortable here after awhile. And you won't have to stay forever, just long enough that no one will make the connection between you and your ship." Without even looking, Dan reached his right arm back and took her hand, giving it a small squeeze before letting go again. "You're going to be alright. I know you will."

It was merely a reassuring touch, although Willow's face all but lit up in flames, anyway. She remembered the feelings she had experienced when she was younger, when she had had a bad dream perhaps, or had skinned her knee, and her mother hugged her close. Hen would hold her hands, or stroke her forehead, or run her fingers through Willow's dark locks. Such feelings, of warmth and coziness and safety, were all familiar to Willow from these quiet moments with her mother; Dan's near-identical touch, however, brought on an avalanche of emotions with which she was not at all acquainted.

She wondered if this was normal. Despite having a great deal of trust in Dan at this point, she opted not to voice her thoughts.

"Here we are," Dan said, jerking Willow out of her mental wanderings. Zeke slowed and stopped, then lay down on his belly and lowered his chin.

Willow creakily stood, trying in vain to stretch out her cramped, sore muscles. As Zeke's canopy raised, she looked around at their windswept destination. What appeared to be the remnants of a large village lay scattered before them; diminutive homes clustered snugly against larger edifices that could have once been small factories or hangars. Although there was extensive damage evident, with many buildings bearing the scars of what could have been a past military engagement, most seemed to be intact. And yet there was an unmistakable air of emptiness here, and the long forgetting that comes with the passing of innumerable years. No sounds could be heard at all except the lonely moaning of the wind.

Dan was watching her carefully. "I know it doesn't look like much. But you'll have space here, and privacy, and most of all safety."

Willow's eyes were in a continual sweep from one end of the village to the other. "But how will I survive? We're in the middle of a desert. Where can I find water?"

Dan nodded, apparently expecting this question. "This village just so happens to be sitting atop an oasis."

"Oh," Willow said, startled. "Well I guess that takes care of that piece of the puzzle, then."

"Sure does. Want to take a look around?" Willow nodded and they both climbed out of Zeke's cockpit.

If it were possible for Willow to feel even more isolated than she already had, as the sole survivor of an emigrating population that had crash-landed in the most desolate landscape possible, she now did as they walked down what could charitably be called a street, but was actually more of a very wide, sand-crusted path. From her perch in the _Globally_ , the fact of her loneliness, in the middle of a desert, had been apparent. That fact was now inescapable; it had been at least an hour's journey from her ship's crash site to this place. They had ventured even further into the barren desert. Would there ever be anything beyond this solitude for her?

"Willow?" Dan asked, gently.

She would not let tears come. Hen had not raised a coward. "Let's have a look," she forced herself to say.

-.-.-.-

Dan had chosen the site well. Many of the huts and structures would provide dependable shelter, the water was fresh and bountiful, and they even discovered what appeared to be the remnants of a long-ago farm. Over and over, in one building after another, there was evidence that the previous citizens of this village had left in a hurry. Numb to the stillness and ever-present wind, Willow's mind wandered, wondering what could have driven an entire village out of their homes.

It was more of a brief tour than an extended exploration, but it gave Willow enough of an idea of layout to make some basic decisions: which hut would be "home," and where she would keep the enormous stores of food they were going to move off of the ship. For herself, she chose a simple, hexagonal home that was located across the street from the village's water source, the latter housed in a building at least three stories high. The underground source created a small but deep pond of clear, potable water, and was framed along each floor all the way up to the ceiling by the remains of open-air walkways, as if the building had once been an atrium of sorts. Attached to the water building was a small warehouse where her food could be kept safely. These decisions made, Dan shifted Zeke closer into the town, and the two unloaded all of the cans and containers in Zeke's cargo carrier.

"We should probably continue on with my sweep," Dan said once they had completed their task. "I don't want to attract any attention from my superiors." Willow nodded, rotating and flexing her sore arms to try and alleviate the muscle pain that was again asserting itself. "I'm sorry that it's not too comfortable for you in Zeke's cockpit, but there's really no getting around it. Unless," he added, casting a sly sideways glance at her, "you want to stuff me in the back and try your hand at piloting him?"

"Me?" Willow breathed.

Dan shaded his eyes with one hand, looking all around them exaggeratedly. "Is there someone else here I might be addressing?"

"No, but-"

"You'll be fine," Dan said seriously, looking at her with a steadiness that made her face flush again. "I'll be right there with you."

Willow, though terrified, her stomach cartwheeling, could nevertheless hardly wait to get her hands on Zeke's controls.

-.-.-.-

"First things first," Dan's voice came from over her right ear. He had somehow managed to cram himself into the small space aft of the pilot's seat, despite being quite a lot taller and more stockily built than she. "That switch there controls the canopy for normal use. The canopy is also designed to break away manually if you hit the emergency eject button - there - or automatically, if Zeke determines a hit he's taken or the circumstances he's in are threatening your life." Willow took a shaky breath and nodded. "So why don't you close the canopy first, and then we'll have him stand up."

"O - okay," Willow stammered. She gently pushed the switch downwards, as though afraid it might snap off in her hands, and Zeke's canopy lowered and sealed shut, dampening the sounds of the wind outside. It was so quiet in the cockpit now that she could hear Dan's breath behind her.

"Good! See, you'll be defending us against the Empire's Iron Kongs in no time!" he joked.

Willow had no idea what an Iron Kong was, and she was so nervous that she decided to save wondering about it for another time, when she wasn't in control of a giant robot weighing who knew how many tons. "What do I do now?" she asked shakily.

"Let's have Zeke stand up and walk around a little," Dan said. "You need to get used to how he feels when under way. Spend enough time piloting and you'll learn to sense what's going on beneath you."

The late morning and early afternoon thus passed. When Willow realized that Zeke wasn't going to spontaneously combust as a result of having a new pilot, her confidence grew, and by the time Dan needed the controls again so he could hurriedly perform the remainder of his assigned sweeps, she had Zeke walking, trotting, lying down, slinking, pivoting on his hind legs, and backing up.

"You're right," she said, standing so they could perform the awkward swap between traveling positions. The high desert sun beat mercilessly down upon their open cockpit. "I really started to be able to sense him a little. Where his balance was, where his legs were, what he was going to do."

Dan grinned at her. "What I wouldn't do to be able to experience piloting a Zoid for the first time again," he said wistfully. "Isn't it just the greatest feeling in the world? Wait until we get him running. It's bliss. It's freedom."

Willow nodded and then laughed as she wiped sweat off of her brow. "It's intense, too. Absolutely incredible!" She looked at Dan, now beside the pilot's seat in front, leaning so casually against Zeke's instrument panel yet somehow not causing everything to go haywire. He was looking at her too, still grinning, caught up in her infectious enthusiasm. "Thank you," she said, seriously. "For all the help and kindness you've given me. And your company, too," she added shyly.

"It's not all selfless charity, Willow-from-Earth," Dan said lightly, turning his back to her as he settled into his seat. She followed suit and wedged herself into what they were now affectionately calling Zeke's jumpseat. "I'm enjoying this, too."

Willow was grateful for her spot just then, that he couldn't see her face flush scarlet.

-.-.-.-

* * *

 **Author's Note:** The large village Willow and Dan visit in this chapter is intended to be the abandoned desert city Van, Fiona, Moonbay, and Irvine visit in episode 5 of Chaotic Century, "Sleeper Trap." Screenshots are available at the fansite The Iron Bible on their page for that episode.


	6. Chapter 6

_**Chapter 6**_

Days passed, falling into something approximating a comfortable routine. Willow lived for the drumming through the sand that told her Zeke was coming, the deep concentration of her piloting lessons, the sound of Dan's voice in her ear or his arm brushing past hers to point out some switch or button she needed to learn, their sunny afternoons together maneuvering Zeke all over Europa's Elemia Desert. They continued moving food, supplies, and belongings to the abandoned village, which they had named, following a lengthy brainstorming session, Fort Zephyr after the restless, lonely winds ceaselessly caressing its barracks and buildings. During breaks from piloting, the learning continued, as Dan taught her the same maintenance and care routines used by the soldiers of the Republican Army to keep their Zoids running smoothly and ready for combat.

One afternoon, as they were heading back to the _Globally_ , Dan turned his head from the pilot's seat to look at her. "I think we're just about done moving everything," he said gently. Willow nodded, to show that she understood what he was really saying: it was time to destroy her ship. The longer it remained there, the more at risk she was. "Tomorrow," he said. "We'll bring the last of your things to Zephyr and you'll spend the night there. On my way back to the base tomorrow night, I'll make it as if your ship were never there." He swiveled around a bit more fully this time, so as to meet her eyes. "Okay?"

"Okay," she whispered sadly, then cleared her throat and repeated, more surely, "Okay." Dan gave her a smile so caring, so warm, so admiring, it almost broke her heart.

-.-.-.-

The next day, they finished moving what remained of Willow's supplies into the cargo carrier.

From her perch in Zeke's cockpit, Willow took one last look at the hulking _Globally_ , the only home she, her mother, and six more generations back had ever known. "What a miracle it was," she murmured, almost to herself, "that this ship took us all so, so far." She wished it were alive like Zeke, so she could thank it for what it had done. But it wasn't; it was just an enormous, crumpled mass with its belly half-buried in featureless sand.

"Do you want to walk through, one last time?" Dan asked. His hand was on her shoulder. A reassuring squeeze.

"No," Willow said, shaking her head, and she meant it. "It's not home to me. Not anymore." The memories and mysteries lurking in its dank, silent depths ought to remain undisturbed now, to await the comforting finality of oblivion.

At Dan's command, Zeke got to his feet and, turning, galloped gracefully away into the desert, leaving the _Globally 11_ far behind.

-.-.-.-

The warehouse was filled to bursting with food and cooking tools, a nearby shed contained all of the farming implements Willow could ever possibly need, and her hut was stocked with clothing, blankets, medicines, books, emergency supplies, and other necessaries and comforts. The past Zoidians' furniture was of a design Willow had never seen before, but certain forms for such basic goods were nearly universal, and she and Dan soon had a soft bed, comfortable reading perch, and kitchen table arranged for her and ready for use. Despite being empty for who knows how long, the accommodations were basically clean, although there was a thin film of blown sand that had found its way in through unknown cracks and holes over the years.

"You're going to be alright here," Dan said. The light was fading; velvet night stole over the sky on the eastern horizon. "I'll help you however I can."

They were strolling down the wide street separating her house from the pond inside the atrium, just enjoying the quietude of one another's company before he had to leave for the night. "I know," Willow said, her eyes on the darkening dome overhead. The moons pushed aside a handful of clouds, illuminating the eerie, empty alleyways running between buildings on either side of them.

"And, Willow," Dan said, stopping. She stopped too, and looked at him inquiringly. The wind sang its wild song through her hair. "I'll be back tomorrow. I want to continue your training."

"Sure, that's fine-" Willow began to say, but he held up a hand.

His eyes were glinting fiercely in the moonlight. "I want to teach you combat."

Willow blinked at him, somewhat stupefied. "Combat? You want me to fight? But why?"

"It's like I said before." He stared at the ground. "It might be necessary someday."

"I guess..." she said, unconvinced.

"It's important to me," he said vaguely, still not looking up. "I want to know that you'll be safe if anything happens." There was a long pause. Butterflies danced in her gut.

"Why do I feel so weird around you?" she blurted out abruptly before she had a moment to think, then almost immediately she wanted to sink into the ground and vanish forevermore, though she didn't know why.

Dan's head shot up and his eyebrows furrowed. "What do you mean? Did I...did I frighten you? I didn't mean-"

"No, no, nothing like that," she interrupted him hastily. "Forget I said anything."

"What is it?" They were still standing in the middle of the street. "Please tell me. Have I done something wrong?"

His voice was so soft and kind that it made the strange feelings flare again in her chest, creeping warmly into her cheeks. She tucked a lock of hair nervously behind her ear. "I feel weird, when I'm around you," she mumbled. "I haven't felt that way around anyone else before. I don't know what it means."

"Weird in what way?" His tone was soothing again, the way it had been when they'd first met.

"Weird like...like when you smile at me, or touch my shoulder, or something. It feels warm on my face and in my chest," she explained, pointing to her breastbone and unable to meet his eyes. "Like I want to be around you more. All the time. And my heart gets fluttery sometimes. But what does that mean? I wanted my mom to be around more, back when she was alive, because it seemed like she never had enough time for me, with all us kids. But it didn't feel like this. It was different." She stopped, feeling strangely confused and ashamed.

"Willow," Dan said. There was an aching tenderness in that one word.

"What?" she asked, again wanting very much to disappear.

"Can you look at me?" When she finally did, he closed the small distance between them and took both of her hands in his. "I think you're describing what happens when you fall in love with someone."

"What do you mean? What is 'falling in love'?" She did not like the sound of that word, "falling." It made her think of the titanic _Globally_ , plunging suicidally out of the sky and killing everyone aboard. Everyone but her.

Dan paused. "What...what was your ship like, Willow? Were there any special pairs of people who were with each other all the time, and sometimes raised children together?"

She shook her head, not understanding where he was going with these questions.

"Who had children, then? How were children raised?"

"By their mothers," Willow said, feeling stupider by the second for not comprehending. "Who else would give birth to them or raise them?"

"And...the fathers? Who were the fathers?"

Willow shrugged. "Could've been anyone. _My_ father was just some guy on the ship. He never really had anything to do with me." She blinked. "Why? Was he supposed to?"

Dan said nothing but guided her gently into the atrium, where they sat down on a fallen stone column by the water's edge. Moonlight poured silver tonight through what remained of the roof, alighting on the clear blue water's ripples like spilled mercury. "What do you know about love?" he asked.

"It's what you feel for your mother and your mother feels for you, and maybe that you feel for your siblings, too, if you have any relationship with them," she replied.

"Is that all?"

"Can't you just tell me what you're getting at?"

Dan ran one hand through his spiky dark hair. "I'm no expert on Earth societies, but I think they worked a lot like they do on Zi. If two people - adult people, I mean - really like each other, and feel the things you said you were feeling around me, it usually means they are in love. That kind of love is different from the kind you feel for your mother. You see, oftentimes those two people would get married, and have their own children or adopt orphaned children. We call that a family."

"Married?" asked Willow, utterly bewildered.

"It means that those two people promise to be together for the rest of their lives, and will not be with anyone else. That's a very broad definition, though." He chuckled to himself. "I thought you said you'd studied your planet's cultures?"

"I...I did," she said, faltering. "They never told us anything like this."

"Who had the children, then? I know it was the mothers, but I mean, how was that arranged?"

Willow rubbed her upper arms with her hands, feeling cool suddenly as certain realizations approached, lurking in the shadows but getting closer. "Well, I'm fifteen now. Next year, when I was sixteen, I was going to start what we called Service."

"'Service'?" echoed Dan.

"I don't really know too much about it. No one was allowed to tell us until we came of age. I just know that that was when all of the women on the ship would start having babies to make sure that the population could survive in sufficient numbers. It was never explained to me because I wasn't old enough."

"And how many siblings did you have?"

"I had nine, although a lot of my classmates had many more."

Dan exhaled, shaking his head. "Remarkable," he said, awed. "All vestiges of relationships and the nuclear family, stripped away, just to make sure the birth rate stayed high enough." He turned to her. "You've been lied to, Willow. They didn't tell you how these things are supposed to go. On Earth or on Zi."

"How - how are they supposed to go?"

"You're supposed to be able to choose one person, who you really like, and hopefully they like you too. Then, if you both want to, you get married. After that, and again, only if you both want to, you have or adopt children, and you all live together. Falling in love with someone is supposed to be the very first piece of that whole process. What they were going to do to you - what they did to your mother or any of the women on your ship who were old enough - was barbaric."

In spite of the atrium's slightly amplified sound, the large room was very quiet. All that could be heard, as Willow sat stiffly and attempted to wrap her brain around what she had just learned, were the near-imperceptible whispers of tiny, lapping waves. It was difficult to integrate everything Dan was saying into the reality she had always known, but, upon even a few moments' reflection, the truth of his words became obvious. It amazed her that she had never realized it all before.

Beside her on the column, Dan shifted. The little sound broke through Willow's thoughts, and she was suddenly acutely aware of the very nearness of his presence.

"Am I falling in love with you?" she asked after a time, looking across the room.

"You might be, yes." His words were gentle and serene, like the calm waters in front of them, smoothing away fears and a future she had narrowly avoided.

"And for two people to choose each other, because they both like each other instead of only one liking the other but the other not liking them, is that unusual?"

"It's a little bit rare, and all the more beautiful for it," Dan said. His voice was slightly husky. She could feel his gaze on her, and turned to him.

"Do you like me too, Dan?" Her earnest eyes were bright.

"Yes," he said softly, taking her hands again.

They sat by the silver-lit water for a very long time, words no longer necessary.


	7. Chapter 7

_**Chapter 7**_

The moons hung low over a small house in an abandoned, ruined village that night, their light seeping into a little room where a young woman tossed and turned.

Sleep was impossible. Willow's thoughts returned over and over to the unbelievable things Dan had said, about how the social conventions aboard her ship had been callously manipulated to all but guarantee survival of the population by the time it had crossed the Milky Way. Why had it been so, when perhaps retaining the conventions common to many societies on Earth could have accomplished the same end, and with far more humanity? She recalled a muttered conversation she had overheard once, years ago, between two pregnant women. It had not made sense to her then, but did now. "Baby machines," one of them had said bitterly. "Is this what it was like back on Earth?" The other had nodded in agreement, then noticed Willow standing curiously by, and shooed her away.

Willow had studied dozens of major countries from her home planet: the United Kingdom, Egypt, Japan, Russia, the United States. She had furthermore read many works of literature, dating from the 1400s to the late 2200s, the time just before the Incognitus Expeditions had launched. Nothing, nothing had ever told her about the lies that had been perpetrated by the planners upon the unsuspecting colonists. Early pioneers, who had surely known of life and mores on Earth, must have been vowed to silence or quietly eliminated if they dared to speak what they knew. All of the documents and works of literature Willow had studied must have been censored so as to never reveal the strange alterations made to the colonists' way of life. The planners had truly thought of everything, hadn't they? Everything except the feelings and very human needs of their test subjects. To the architects of the expedition, the ends justified the means, and nothing at all mattered but getting at least some humans to Zi alive.

She rolled over again and looked out her open window, where Zi's two moons hovered placidly in a deep green sky. This view would have been utterly alien to any inhabitant of Earth, accustomed as they were to their one gray moon. Yet it did not feel strange to Willow; she had no point of reference for how the heavens should appear, and could hardly be called an inhabitant of Earth since she had never been there. Truly, it seemed as though she belonged nowhere: a homeless drifter, of neither her ancestors' planet nor the one she now lived on. She understood, now, just how much she didn't know about her people's past. Her treasured books were useless.

The isolation she had felt since the crash was nearly suffocating. Everything she had ever known was suspect; everyone she had ever known was gone. And now, somewhere across the Elemia Desert, her ship was gone, too: blown up, eliminated, wiped off the face of the planet. Cole's smooth face, with its trickle of blood, came to her then, as his words echoed painfully through her mind: "Will you tell me what Incognitus is like?"

"It is lonely here, and empty," she whispered into the darkness. The wind moaned around the eves of the little hut. Outside her window, Zi's moons, at least, were not alone, for they had one another for company.

-.-.-.-

The sadness of solitude was assuaged somewhat by the coming of dawn; the fresh, newborn light made brighter times seem possible again. Willow, though exhausted from such a thorough lack of sleep, resolved nevertheless to explore the ruined village while she awaited Dan's arrival. Curiosity over what had driven away all of its previous inhabitants, and so suddenly, too, endured as she sauntered down sandy streets and poked her head into empty homes and businesses.

Everywhere, she found evidence of speedy departures: dishes still set out on tables, toys arranged on floors as though awaiting their owners' returns so that the adventures could continue, wardrobes thrown open with what remained of the clothes within in disarray. She began examining bookshelves and writing desks, seeking out any documents which might provide a clue as to what had happened. It did not take her long to discover that she was unable to decipher the Zoidians' writing, however.

Her search thus concluded for the day, she stepped back outside, where vibrations in the ground told her that Zeke was coming. She hastened to her house, which was close to the northernmost point of Fort Zephyr and therefore nearest the barracks, from which direction Dan could be expected to arrive. Sure enough, a gleaming white Command Wolf came into view momentarily, and lay down in front of her. The orange canopy raised, glinting in the morning light, and there was Dan, waving at her. "Hey, Willow." She waved back and immediately began to feel her face flushing, although at least now, for the first time, she understood why.

He hopped down from the cockpit and walked over to her, smiling shyly. "How did you do last night?"

"I didn't sleep too well," she admitted. "I couldn't stop thinking about the things you told me."

"I hope I didn't overwhelm you," he said apologetically. "You've had a lot to come to terms with since you landed here."

"Speaking of landing here…" She trailed off, not wanting to speak the words aloud.

"It's gone," Dan said softly. "I'm sorry. We gave it the best send-off we could." Behind him, Zeke growled quietly in agreement.

"Thank you both. Truly. It hurts, but...I understand why it had to be done."

"I know you do. I know." He turned and eyed Zeke for a moment. "Do you...do you feel up for this? For training?"

Willow nodded. "It helps to have a task to focus on, I think."

They headed towards Zeke's cockpit and climbed aboard. Willow had him on his feet in no time, and trotted him a few hundred yards away from the village. "So how is this going to work, with no enemies here?"

"Well, first I want to teach you some avoidance maneuvers. Most Zoids don't have the kind of armor or shielding to protect them from melee attacks or heavy fire for long. In order to survive long enough for _your_ attacks to accomplish something, you need to have good defensive and evasive capabilities first. Zeke here is a good example. He'll go down if he takes a hard hit, but he's very fast and nimble. Command Wolves are difficult to hit when piloted well."

For the rest of the morning and into the early afternoon, the collapsing remains of the barracks served as a stationary enemy. Awkwardly at first, and then more fluidly and naturally, Willow guided Zeke around it in circles, forwards and backwards, and was soon able to move to any angle required without losing visual contact or breaking target lock. She then practiced higher-speed dodges and evasions, dancing the wolf from side to side, leaping, spinning, and ducking until sweat was pouring off of her.

"I think I need a little break," she said at the same moment that her stomach growled loudly.

"You've done great for today," Dan said admiringly. "You're picking all this up much, much faster than I did when I joined the army."

"I think I just have a good teacher," Willow replied, blushing.

He smiled at her. "Let's head back."

Willow turned the steering column and Zeke trotted obligingly off across the desert, tail held happily aloft.

-.-.-.-

Over the next several days, the two did not speak again of what they had discussed that night in the atrium, either the depressing revelations or their feelings for each other. Willow thought of that night often while awaiting sleep, but during her fleeting hours with Dan, she ironically was hardly able to focus on him at all. His excellent tutelage quickened in pace and seriousness. Willow learned how to deploy Zeke's fangs and claws as weapons first, striking out at invisible, imagined enemies, and upon mastery of those offensive capabilities, moved on to his back-mounted beam cannons.

What Dan had said about learning to sense Zeke beneath her proved more prophetic than ever. The Zoid was not the ponderous monstrosity his sheer size would have suggested, but, in Willow's increasingly skilled hands, an extension of her body, just another appendage whose trajectory, speed of motion, and placement in space were innately sensed and instinctual.

The sun was setting over a peaceful desert after a long day of training. Zeke stood quietly, awaiting further command. Willow slumped back in the pilot's seat, taking a breather after a particularly grueling gauntlet of maneuvers and attacks. Dan put one hand on her shoulder and she sat up immediately.

"You have incredible raw talent," he said. "You should be proud of all you've accomplished."

"I am," Willow said, and she realized that she actually was. Being a Zoid pilot was so much more exciting - and so much more immediate - than the occupation that had been laid out for her years ago aboard the _Globally_.

"So then how about a little reward for all of that hard work? There's one big thing we haven't tried with him yet."

Willow couldn't imagine what it could be. "What haven't we tried?"

Dan leaned down very close, so his lips were right next to her ear. "Open him up," he whispered.

She laughed aloud. "Of course!" Excitement surged electric through her limbs at the very thought, even as her ear tingled delightfully from his momentary proximity. "Oh, I can't wait. Better hold on tight, Dan. This is going to be amazing."

"Oh, I'm holding on real good," he assured her, a fiendish grin playing about his lips as he snaked one arm around the top of the pilot's seat, and the other forward to hold her shoulder.

Willow grinned, too, enjoying this connection between them. "Come on, Zeke! Show me what you can do!" She buried the rightmost foot pedal to the floor.

Zeke howled with joy and bounded forward, transitioning smoothly over mere seconds from a jog to a gallop to a full-on sprint. His two passengers simultaneously sensed his tail rising for balance, and his head lowering for less wind resistance. His claws sunk deeply into the sand for traction, and his stride widened: longer, longer, longer.

Rolling hills on either side flew past in beige blurs, and the horizon was surging closer at an impossible velocity. Willow shrieked from the thrill of it all, convinced that she was going faster now than the _Globally_ had ever managed to streak across the heavens, and Zeke answered her with an exhilarated cry of his own. Every stride seemed to cover miles; every moment between the launch off of his hind legs and the landing of his front seemed to propel the three of them through the air at supersonic speed. She never wanted this moment to end: Zeke's growls of delight rumbling beneath her feet, Dan's laughter in her ears, the crushing sensation of her body pressed against the seatback from sheer, dizzying momentum.

Suddenly, a frantic beeping from Zeke's command systems blared deafeningly around the cockpit. "What's going on?!" Willow cried in surprise, taking her hands off of the steering column for a moment. Zeke veered.

"Keep control! Keep control!" Dan barked, straightening up and leaning far forward to check one of the monitors. Willow snapped her hands back into position immediately and craned her neck to look at their surroundings. "We've got incoming," Dan reported. "Looks like only one Zoid. Maybe got separated from its unit, although there aren't supposed to be any Imperial units for miles. Do _not_ engage unless we're fired upon."

Willow brought Zeke to a halt and positioned him to be facing the direction that the radar indicated as containing the errant Zoid. She clutched the steering column's handles with a white-knuckle grip, struggling to breathe amid the sudden tension. Dan was still leaning over her, eyes darting keenly between the view ahead and the monitors in front of them.

The suspense was unbearable, until finally, the Zoid appeared over the horizon. It wasn't a Command Wolf, that much she knew, but beyond that, she had no idea what it was.

"Okay," Dan said, breathing a little more easily. "It's a Molga. Are you okay to take it out if it attacks?"

"And - and hurt the pilot?!" Willow squeaked in protest.

"Don't aim for the cockpit if that's what you're worried about, although if he fires on us I don't care what happens to him. Work on disrupting mobility. You can use Zeke's claws, or fire on its wheels." Willow eyed the slithering Molga carefully as it approached. The beeping was unendurable. "Wait," Dan said.

"What?"

"I don't think it has a pilot."

"Zoids can move without pilots?!" she said, thunderstruck.

"Of course they can," he said, his eyes never leaving the small, dim green form in the distance. "They're alive, remember?"

"Then what does this mean?"

"It's a wild Zoid, probably. Either it's never had a pilot or it escaped from the Imperial army. Hard to tell which, although the Molga hasn't really been used since the fall of the Zenebas Empire about ten years ago, so it's odd to be seeing one now."

Another flurry of earsplitting beeps precluded any further comment he had been about to make. "We're in target lock!" Dan yelled. "Evasive maneuvers! Now!"

All of the many drills and practice sessions together now bore fruit in Willow's muscle memory and her immediate response; at her command, Zeke dove forward and sideways, narrowly avoiding a missile that whistled down and exploded behind them.

"Engage!"

Willow locked on to the Molga, which was surprisingly fast considering it didn't have much in the way of legs, and charged forward. Her third shot from Zeke's cannons connected, slowing down her adversary considerably. It fired back, and Willow, observing its dorsal gatling gun turret rotating in the twilight, was able to anticipate its movements enough to dance Zeke out of harm's way. When she felt a shuddering impact through the floor of the cockpit, however, she knew they had at last been hit.

"I - I think it got the leg! Front leg!"

"Zeke's fine; just move in for close combat! Take it out!"

Willow did as she was told and rapidly eliminated the remaining space between them. Zeke roared furiously, surging forward, and savagely clawed the Molga's side, damaging its wheel. Electricity sparked uselessly out of broken circuits in the caterpillar's side, and at last the creature stilled.

Zeke still remained crouched, prepared to move in any direction necessary should his opponent reengage. The only sounds in the cockpit were Willow's gasping breaths. "Are we d-done?" she stammered, the adrenaline coursing through her body so strongly that she thought she might faint.

"Sensors confirming a command system freeze," Dan read off of the monitor. He looked up. "Yes. We're done." He exhaled for a long moment, and allowed himself a chuckle. "That was...awesome. You did great, Willow. Really great."

"Did I kill it?"

"No." He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly again. "You can't kill a Zoid unless you destroy its Zoid core. Its heart," he added in response to her confused expression. "Zoids can heal from minor damage on their own, just like we can. This one'll recover, don't worry."

"Why did it attack us?"

"Wild Zoids like to have territories, as I understand it. Maybe we wandered into its area and didn't realize."

She nodded, and only then realized she was trembling uncontrollably. She took a calming inhale and turned Zeke around, urging him into a jog. "That was...an _enormous_ rush," she said, smiling a little bit.

"You have no idea," Dan replied sagely, shaking his head and laughing. "You have no idea."

-.-.-.-

When Fort Zephyr came into view, she didn't know how many miles they had traversed, between their run and unplanned battle, although it all seemed to have happened in the space of a few short minutes. Reluctantly, she eased Zeke down to a walk, and lay him down at the entrance to the village.

When the canopy swung open, the familiar sound of the whistling wind met them. They climbed out, and Willow, woozy from excitement and adrenaline overload, stumbled almost immediately. She fell to the dusty ground and didn't bother to get up, she was now laughing so hard: at herself, at everything. "I blame Zi's foreign gravity!" she said dramatically, pointing her finger upwards at nothing, giggling until she finally regained control of herself. She exhaled and stared at the dim sky overhead. "What a day."

Dan, who had managed to hold back his own laughter - although only just - helped her to her feet. Once she was standing, though, his face turned serious. Still holding her hands, he used them to suddenly pull her close, resting his chin on the top of her head and wrapping his arms around her.

Though she was momentarily taken by surprise, deeply-ingrained instincts that no amount of social engineering could erase soon made sense of it all. She put her cheek against his chest, from whence she could feel his heartbeat, put her arms around him, and closed her eyes. Her pulse slowed. "Does this mean we get married now?" she asked dreamily.

She heard his startled laugh amplified against her left ear. "No."

She tilted her head back to look up at him. "But you said if we both like each other, and we want to, we could get married."

He would not have been able to keep the corners of his mouth down if he'd tried. "Well, that _is_ the basic gist of it, but there's a lot more to it than that, you see."

"Oh." She considered this. "Then what do we do now?"

It was one of the rare instances that Dan blushed. "May I kiss you?" he asked.

"My mom used to kiss my forehead. Is kissing different for people who are in love?"

"Yes." He cradled her upturned face in his hands, ducked forward, and pressed his lips softly to hers.

They broke off after a long moment. Willow was starry-eyed as she gazed into his kind face, the red mark on his cheek seeming to glow faintly as Zi's moons ascended. "I liked that," she said.

Amused at such directness, he chuckled. "I did, too."

"Again?" she asked shyly.

He was only too happy to oblige, and placed one hand behind her head, holding her hand with the other. They kissed with lips parted; their bodies pressed close. Several minutes passed before Zeke growled softly, reminding them he was there.

Dan pecked her on the lips once more before releasing her. "I'm sorry, friend," he said to Zeke. "We didn't even take a look at your leg, did we?"

"Sorry, Zeke," Willow added. "It wasn't nice to forget about you!" Although, in retrospect, how could she not have? Her lips tingled with the memory of Dan's kiss. She had never experienced anything even remotely like it before.

Dan retrieved a flashlight from the cockpit and trained its light all over Zeke's left foreleg. "You'll be alright, buddy," he said after a moment, patting a metallic flank. "I'll just tweak a few of your parameters to speed things up and you'll be feeling better in no time." He climbed back into the cockpit, from whence soon came various beeps as he input commands. He seemed to be just finishing up when the radio crackled suddenly and noisily to life. Willow heard sharp words in a language she didn't understand. Dan responded testily in the same language, and as the back and forth continued, he sounded more and more angry and resigned.

The conversation went on for another minute or two, and as Dan's posture seemed to wilt, Willow felt increasingly uncomfortable with not knowing what was being said. He finally ended the radio transmission. "Okay buddy!" he said to his Zoid, chipper and businesslike. "All set!" Zeke vocalized softly in response. Dan's good cheer rang false to Willow. Something had happened, although she couldn't pinpoint what.

"Dinner?" she suggested hopefully. "I'm ravenous."

"I should probably get back to base," he said evasively. "As much as I'd like to stay. And I wouldn't want to use any of your food stores."

"Oh, okay. I understand. Will you be back tomorrow?"

"Of course." He kissed her cheek and climbed into the cockpit. "Good night, Willow-from-Earth," he said tenderly, and more than a little sadly, she thought.

"Good night," she replied, confused.

Zeke's white panels were luminescent in the moonlight and visible for a long time as he trotted away.


	8. Chapter 8

_**Chapter 8**_

Willow roamed aimlessly around Fort Zephyr that night after Dan's sudden departure, reflecting on all that had happened. It seemed as though countless years had passed since she had last been cozily ensconced in her sleep pod, dreaming of other planets and of home, wherever and whatever that was. In spite of her landing on Zi, there was no terra firma for her now, nothing foreseeable, nothing safe. Conditions aboard the _Globally_ , such as they were, had had far more continuity and predictability than any of the circumstances she had found herself in since the crash.

There was something to be said for a new world, a new life free of the boundaries she hadn't even really been aware of until now, but then, she found herself missing the orderliness that had come before, too.

The front door to a small house ahead swung forlornly back and forth in a stream of inconstant desert wind that had found its way through the alleys. Willow sauntered inside, beaming her flashlight around the modest main room. Children had lived here; there was a small quantity of toys and coloring sheets scattered across the floor next to a large bed. Willow picked up the sheaf of pages and flipped through them. They were all juvenile scribbles of the same subject matter: a black and red dinosaur-type Zoid - she was assuming it was a Zoid, anyway - towering over the wee buildings at its feet. It felt eerie, and wrong. Unnatural.

"I still have so much to learn about this place," she murmured to herself.

Sleep came uneasily that night and brought with it bizarre fragments and snatches of visions. She dreamed of Cole's young face, visible in the dark sky where perhaps Zi's third moon had once been, watching her with blank, lifeless eyes. She dreamed of the bodies that lay buried near where the _Globally_ had once lain, whispering Earth secrets to one another beneath the sand. And she dreamed of Dan, standing at the foot of the black and red dinosaur Zoid she had seen in the child's scribbles, gazing up at its towering heights with anger and fear etched across his furrowed brow. She awoke in the deep hours of the night haunted by these ominous portents, though she knew not what they could mean.

-.-.-.-

Zeke arrived as usual the next morning, but when his canopy raised, Willow noticed immediately that Dan did not look himself.

"Hey," she greeted. "Are you okay?"

"Yes, I'm fine," he said absently. He seemed reluctant to exit the cockpit, but when he finally did, he did not offer Willow the kiss or hug hello she had expected.

"So, what are we doing today?"

"I want to teach you one last thing," he said. "It's a special attack unique only to Command Wolves, and I hope you'll never have need to use it. It's called Ragnarok Fang."

"Okay," she assented. Uncertainty seemed to dance in the long shadows cast by the early sun, low on the eastern horizon still. "Let's give it a try."

They climbed into the cockpit together, Willow at the controls, and she closed the canopy. There was a gravity weighing on the proceedings, and it tugged at her dangerously. Dan's presence behind her in Zeke's jumpseat did not bring the same sense of comfort and levity as it had during their past lessons.

Zeke trotted out into the desert towards the abandoned barracks and Willow locked her sights on it. "Okay," she said. "So how do I execute this attack?"

"You're not going to actually execute it," Dan replied. "I'm just going to explain to you how it's done."

"Is it something I can't pull off without an actual enemy in front of me?"

"No, it's something you can't pull off and still come out of alive." Willow blinked, staring rigidly ahead, unsure if she had heard him correctly. Sensing her confusion, he continued, "Ragnarok Fang is a desperation move, used only when annihilating your enemy is more important than your own survival. Do not ever use it unless you're prepared to destroy both yourself and your Wolf."

Willow nodded. "Why are you teaching me this?"

"The same reason I've taught you everything you know about Zoids so far," came his answer over her right shoulder. "It may be necessary someday."

"But this one, at least, won't be for purposes of saving my life," she noted wryly.

"No." He took a deep breath. "I want this maneuver burned into your muscle memory, okay? While it is my sincerest wish that you will always be safe from harm, there may come a time when Zi needs a hero. When Zi needs _you_. I hope, if she does, you will answer her call." There was anguish in his words. Willow thought then of the towering black and red dinosaur Zoid, and of meteorites raining mercilessly down upon a suffering planet. "Now. Imagine the barracks are your foe, a foe that must be neutralized at all costs. Don't hold back, even for this practice exercise, do you understand?" Willow nodded shakily. "Okay. Now charge your enemy and prepare Zeke to bite. When you've closed in, give the bite everything you have."

Willow did as she was told. Zeke sensed her intentions and responded in kind, surging forward with ferocity. At his pilot's command, he lunged at a corner of one of the buildings with vicious fangs, tearing half of the foundations out in one pass.

"Retreat," Dan ordered, "and do it again."

Willow danced Zeke backwards from imaginary retaliatory attacks, then sent him forward once more. He knocked the remainder of the first building over this time.

"Retreat. And again."

Over and over, Zeke savagely attacked one structure after another, leveling them all, his combat motivation rising with each round until he was growling and roaring without end. Sweat dripped into Willow's eyes and her muscles burned with exhaustion, but sensing Dan's seriousness, she remained diligent and focused on the task at hand.

"Enough," Dan said at long last. Few of the barracks remained standing. Willow, shaking violently, had Zeke walk off the bloodlust that had come over him until his monitors registered a stable operating temperature and she had caught her breath again.

"When you are going to execute Ragnarok Fang," Dan said heavily, "do everything exactly like what you just did, with one exception. Just before you charge forward, touch this monitor image of Zeke on the mouth, and a command option for Ragnarok will come up. Touch that command twice, and complete your attack. I don't think I need to emphasize to you how important it is that you give it your all, or you will have sacrificed yourself and your Zoid for nothing."

"I understand," Willow said faintly. She walked Zeke back to Fort Zephyr. "What I don't understand, though," she continued as she lay him down and climbed out of his cockpit, with Dan following, "is why you taught me something like that." Dan moved to speak, but she interrupted, "Please don't tell me again that it may be necessary someday, or may save my life someday." She looked hard at him; he would not meet her eyes. "What's going on, Dan? What are you keeping from me?"

To her surprise, a tear leaked down his cheek, slightly warping the sharp, straight outline of his red facial marking. "I gave you those reasons because they're true," he murmured. "And what I've been keeping from you is that I can't see you anymore."

"Why?" she cried. Her stomach plummeted.

"Because I'm endangering you, by coming here. They've been asking questions. Nosing around your crash site. Someone is going to find out who, and what, you are, and then everything I've done to protect you will have failed."

"Isn't there some other way?" she begged.

"No. Not now." He took a shuddering breath. "This isn't goodbye forever, Willow, it's just goodbye until it's safe for you to come out of hiding. I promise on my family's graves that I'll come back for you both someday."

"'Both'...?" Willow echoed, and then realization broke over her like a wave. She looked over his shoulder at the prone white creature beyond. "Zeke," she breathed.

Dan nodded wordlessly, the tears now streaming down his face.

"You can't do this," she protested immediately. "Zeke is your partner. Your best friend." Dan nodded again, his heart breaking open right in front of her. "What would you tell the army?"

"That we got separated in a sandstorm," he said dully. "It's happened to the best of us. Plenty of Zoids have been lost that way."

"Why? Why are you doing this?"

"Because, Willow," he said, finally looking up at her through red-rimmed eyes. "Because I love you. I have to leave you behind, and this is the only way I'll know for sure that you'll be able to stay safe. You know how to pilot Zeke now, very well in fact, and with him you'll be able to defend yourself, and move on if something ever happened here that put you in danger again.

"I told you. I don't want anyone ever again to have to feel helpless and afraid. You're not helpless now - you're going to survive. And with Zeke with you, you'll have nothing to fear." Willow stepped towards him uncertainly, and he folded her swiftly into his arms, holding her close. She squeezed her eyes shut against the tears that were forming, but they escaped into his shirt, anyway. "I love you, Willow," he told her quietly, stroking her hair.

"I love you, too," she said in a voice thick with grief.

"I know you do. And I know how much you've been through. I know how much you've lost. I _will_ come back for you both someday. I will, I will." He released her and took her face in his hands, kissing her gently, mingling their tears.

When they parted, he stepped over to Zeke and put his hand on the Zoid's massive paw. "I'll see you again, dear friend. Willow will take care of you and I ask that you take care of her." Zeke vocalized softly, a low, strange sound. Dan looked at the stricken young woman watching him. "His tracking system has been destroyed and I've removed all of his identification markers except one. No one will know where he is anymore and no one will know his registration information unless they know exactly where to look." Willow could not speak; her breath came weakly.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," Dan came back to her and held both her hands, struggling valiantly not to cry. "Please understand."

"I do," she whispered.

Hen had not raised a coward.

Cole had not saved her life for nothing.

"When I come back someday, I'd like to marry you, Willow." He kissed her forehead, both her cheeks, then her lips. "Will you wait for me?"

"Yes, of course." She stroked his cheek, and the blood-red marking there. "Of course I will."

He released her remaining hand and walked backwards towards Zeke, not breaking eye contact until he climbed into the cockpit and retrieved a hoverboard. "Goodbye, Willow-from-Earth," he said quietly. He looked up at Zeke's brilliant orange canopy. "Goodbye, Zeke." Without another word nor backward glance, he stepped onto the hoverboard and went whirring off into the hushed desert hills beyond.

Willow remained motionless for a moment in a blank stupor, then dashed into Zeke's pilot's seat - _her_ pilot's seat - and brought him to his feet. She swung him around, and together, the two of them watched Dan's departing figure getting smaller and smaller until he had disappeared over the horizon.

Zeke lifted his muzzle and let out a long, mournful howl, a sound that echoed through the wandering winds, flew for miles across the Elemia Desert, and reverberated deep within Willow's fiercely beating heart.

-.-.-.-

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Thank you so much for reading, and doubly so if you've reviewed. I had a lot of fun writing "Earthling" and hope you enjoyed reading it just as much.  
This is the first in a trilogy, with at least one side project planned. Willow's adventures continue in "Remain in the Light of the Stars."


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